


Have It Your Way (can't stand the night)

by WhiskyInMind (MomentsLost)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-18
Updated: 2013-06-18
Packaged: 2017-12-15 09:19:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentsLost/pseuds/WhiskyInMind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't cook, but she wants to do this for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have It Your Way (can't stand the night)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Telaryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/gifts).



> Written as part of my April prompt list for Telaryn who gave me the prompt: "Clint, Nat, the perfect American cheeseburger"

She doesn't cook. It's not that she _can't_ cook; it's just... Naomi Richmond loved cooking – hell, that woman was a damned domestic goddess most of the time. Nicola Russell baked cupcakes for the office every Friday. Even Natalie Rushman could whip up a mean Spanish omelette when the mood struck. Cooking has always been an additional part of her skill set. Something that in the past was required as part of a cover. Not something Natasha Romanoff _wants_ to do. 

Until now, now she _wants_ to do this and she hates that she doesn't know how. She snarls as she tosses the latest burnt offering into the trash and glances up at the clock. Three pm. Right now Clint will be in with the therapist for what _should_ be his final assessment before he's cleared for duty. Nat can do nothing but hope he behaves himself and tones down the sarcasm enough so that there's no chance Doc Phillips will think he's serious; but still be sarcastic enough to let the essential 'Clint'ness shine through.

She smirks a little, wondering how anyone could think it would _ever_ be a good thing to let the 'Clint'ness show. The man is infuriating, cocky, self-assured, annoying as hell and dammit she's missed being able to turn around and tell him that. Seeing the shadow of himself he had become after Loki had fucked with his brain hurt even more than the days she wakes up struggling to find herself in the mess of her own mind. She knows the struggles to find oneself again, the constant questions – is this me? _Is this who I am?_

She shakes her head. He can do it, she knows he can, she believes in him ( _always has_ ). Knows he can do anything he wants to do; so _why the hell can't **she** make a damn cheeseburger?!_

It had started as a whim, a flippant comment made during one of the four hours a week she was officially allowed to visit him during his enforced stay in the infirmary (and she was under no illusions that anyone believed those were the only four hours she was there, at least for that first week anyway). They'd deliberately kept conversation light   
(small talk, it was called, and dammit she hated seeing him so _small_ , talking about the weather)  
and then when she'd said something about visiting _Masa_ the night before he'd told her how the commissary's food still sucked and how he'd give _anything_ for a real American cheeseburger. It was only their years of being partners that clued her in on the unsaid "I'd kill for..." – it pained her to acknowledge just how much he was censoring for the benefit of the unseen observers. She wouldn't have wished that kind of life on her worst enemy, and as for Clint enduring it? 

She blinks. No, she won't think about that. The important thing right now is figuring out how to turn half a pound of ground beef into a medium rare burger without the outside burning to a cinder whilst the inside is still damn well _Mooing_ \- and let's not even talk about finding the perfect Wisconsin cheese to melt over it, and the bacon – smoked or not? – and relish? Should she add pickles? Salad? How the hell was someone raised to think that McDonalds was the epitome of all that was evil about the USA   
_(and yet when the Golden Arches first appeared in Moscow in the '90s the queues would have been unprecedented anywhere but Russia)_  
supposed to know – let alone make – the perfect American cheeseburger?

"Fuck it!" she yells, throwing the scorched skillet across the room and narrowly missing the man standing somewhat sheepishly in the doorway.

"Might be a little awkward, but if you insist..."   
"Clint! What... why..?" She tries to pull herself together. "You're early! I was..." She gives a little sheepish smile. "I was making you a burger."  
"Yeah, I could hear the smoke alarm three blocks back," he says with that damned crooked grin, making her wish she has something to throw at him that wasn't a knife (she was pretty sure he wouldn't take that particularly well after what had happened between them back on the Helicarrier).  
"Bite me," she says. An automatic reply she'd picked up (from him) the first time they'd gotten into an argument with Maria (not that she would say it to _her_ now that she was Assistant Director Hill of course. Or at least, not in front of other agents)  
"Again, might be a little awkward but... if you insist." The smile on his face always makes her think of the term "shit eating grin" – one of those phrases that made no sense to anyone but nonetheless was accepted as a mainstay of American culture. Just like the cheeseburger she is currently failing to make. Right now she is fighting against every instinct she had to throw herself into his arms   
_(the black widow needs no man)_  
and she knows it's a struggle pretty much negated by him all but sprinting across the room, grabbing her around the middle and twirling her around while saying "you can take our lives, but you'll never take our freedom!" a reference she doesn't quite understand but figures was from one of those cheesy movies he persists on watching, despite her attempts to educate him as to the merits of the art of European Cinema...  
"So they let you out then," she forces herself not to make it a question. _She_ believed in him, no question, but trusting that others would do the same? That had haunted her since New York.  
"You see in front of you a shackle-less man. More or less."  
She wants to both throttle and hug him, but instead she turns her back to him and manages to say, "More fool them."

His hand is on her shoulder before she registers he'd moved (he'd never failed to surprise her) and she forces down the shudder she feels.  
"Hey," he says. "I'm here."  
She nods, knowing the tears are coming and she fights them every step of the way.  
He knows though, he always does. "You know what? I could murder a Bacon Double Cheeseburger right about now...."  
She smiles a little as she turns and wraps her arms around him and says "have it your way. One time offer."

He laughs into her hair and for the first (real) time she can remember she outright grins.


End file.
